When preparing a meal there is normally a need to cook a plurality of ingredients. Traditionally this can be made simultaneously by putting different cooking pots on different heat sources such as stove plates. This is time consuming, and the efficiency of the supplied energy is low due to the indirect cooking. It is also hard to match the timing of the cooking of the various ingredients in a meal.
Simultaneous cooking of various food items in one single apparatus is generally known. Examples of this are disclosed in CN 201683715, EP 1785073 and US 2005072315. The devices in these disclosures all have an aggregated cooking pot with heating means that is common for the different compartments or sub-pots of the aggregated cooking pot. Thereby individual cooking procedures cannot be made for the food in the compartments.
Further examples of simultaneous cooking of various food items are disclosed in CN 201641593 and CN 20123900. The device of CN 201641593 is an electrical cooker with a multiple inner chambers, and at the bottom of each chamber there is an electric heating device. Each heating device is controlled by a switch and a timing device.
CN 201683715 discloses an outer pot in which an inner pot is housed. The inner pot is divided into two or more sub-pots. The outer pot has a plurality of heating coils with independent control circuits for individually heating the content in the sub-pots.
These known devices for simultaneous and individual cooking suffer from the drawback that they lack flexibility in use, since a complete cooking aggregate has to be used independent of the number of cooking items and since the design of the chambers/sub-pots are fixed. These devices therefore are not suitable for various cooking situations.